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"A former Government chief scientist has said that coronavirus patients over the age of 90 should consider not going into hospital to avoid being a 'burden' on the health service.

Professor Sir David King suggested that patients could choose to stay at home rather than risk dying in hospital to help the NHS cope.

'I certainly would advise anyone in the region of 90, 95 years old who is susceptible for whatever reason, not to go into hospital for two reasons,' Sir David said, according to BBC Radio 4.

'One is, you go into hospital at that age with problems and you may never come out, but of course the second reason is you are overburdening the NHS.'"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8154673/Governments-ex-chief-scientist-Sir-David-King-blasted-telling-frail-stay-home.html

Not promising figures from Lombardy today by the sound of it. Hopefully just a one off blip and Italy keeps declining over the next few days...

IanB2 said:

Nigelb said:

IanB2 said:

FF43 said:

BluestBlue said:

IanB2 said:

egg said:

“whatever it takes” part two.

For the record, who actually thinks whatever it takes part one is doable, delivered as promised?

(I am expecting the lefties on here to simply reply yes, and those economically right of centre and government supporters to remain largely silent)

My view from the beginning is that the missing element is a temporary supertax.

What the fuck for?

Ultimately the COVID19 costs will need to be paid for. People who maintained very high incomes throughout are good candidates for a larger contribution.

Absolutely right.

The problem the economy has isn’t the lack of spending power, it’s the preventing money from circulating.

Anyone with a secure income has saved during the lockdown from not spending on meals out, pub visits, personal services, travel, and the rest.

Meanwhile the people employed in said industries have suffered a collapse in income.

If we do nothing, tons of people and businesses providing these services go to the wall.

If the state provides their income, we end up with an inflationary spike and a burden upon the state that will take a generation to clear.

The right answer is to levy a supertax to extract the unspent surplus from those relatively unaffected and to redirect the proceeds to those not receiving.

The would be an enormously inefficient and slow means of trying to achieve what you think it would.
Look how long the government is taking just to hand out cash...

End of the tax year will be fine.

The alternative is that the state drops helicopter money on those losing their income because other people are not spending, while the saving from their not spending still sits with them whose incomes are stable. When the music stops, that will mean a good burst of inflation.

Surely it should be a one-off increase to the digital tax? Amazon, Netflix, Facebook etc. - that's where all the money is going at the moment isn't it? It would obviously be clawed back from the consumer in the form of higher prices in the end, but it's still very defensible politically.

MarqueeMark said:

Charles said:

Barnesian said:

Here is the latest world data. It appears the latest UK figures for deaths have not been added for some reason.

My pet peeve.

If you are going to have two charts with the same categories (in this case countries) side by side then use the same f*cking colours!

And I'm pretty sure the UK deaths haven't plateaued.....

Data query: what site are people pulling their death numbers from?

A popular choice would be John Hopkins CSSE who are helpfully tracking deaths and confirmed by cases by country and region and sticking it up on GitHub. Here's their deaths page for example.

Problem is, their UK numbers don't seem to match the UK's official figures, whereas Wikipedia's figures seem to be getting it right.

This is a bit frustrating as it is dead easy to pull the CSSE figures from the raw CSV but then you get UK cumulative death progression as 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 8, 8, 21, 21, 55, 55, 71, 137, 177, 233, 281, 335, 422, 465 (you can see this looks wonky because some of the cumulative totals are repeating from one day to the next, as if nobody had died that day, when the figure hasn't been updated) rather than the (correct?) figures that Wiki has which are 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10, 21, 35, 55, 71, 103, 144, 177, 233, 281, 335, 422, 465.

I don't mind hardcoding and typing out a few numbers but it's nicer if you can just write a line of code that goes to an online data source and extracts it all for you, especially if you want to do international comparisons. It's generally a bit fiddlier scraping data from Wikipedia. So where is everyone else going?

FF43 said:

Charles said:

FF43 said:

The only risk with going ahead with the EU allocation of ventilators is the cost of equipment. Which is trivial in the scheme of things. If the government finds they are surplus to requirements, it can sell them on. It's a no brainer.

The risks are much higher of depending on a manufacturer, who hasn't made this equipment before to productise a new design in a matter of days without testing in the field. It is sensible to mitigate that risk.

Brexit is the only reason I can see for not doing so. The government hasn't actually put forward a justification for not doing so..

Do you know?

My guess - and it is just a guess - that if you participate in the scheme then *all* equipment has to be purchased through it (and shared according to whatever the scheme sets out). This is sensible because it stops the various countries also going direct and competing for supply.

Given that Smiths Medical (one of the leading manufacturers of ventilators), Medlock Medical (ditto for PPE) and Regent Biogel (ditto for surgical gloves) are all based in the UK it may have been rational for the UK to decline.

I can quite imagine that the government doesn't want to stand up publicly and say "f*ck everyone else, we are hoarding stuff for our own population". The optics would not be good.

Do you have the list of countries participating? I don't think it is all of them.

I'd be particularly interested in Sweden (Molnlycke, Getinge) and Germany (Hartmann).

It would be reasonable in that case for the government to offer this explanation in response to the direct question. In fact their very weak justification is that "we're no longer members of the EU", which supports my explanation.

I get the impression that this is something of a Boris Bus project where the project becomes the objective, not the product itself. So that might be part of it.

If you are going to make an accusation of that serious a nature you need more evidence than "I get the impression"

Floater said:

bigjohnowls said:

Floater said:

williamglenn said:

https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1243204466234580999

The same China who moaned when other countries did the same to them?

Its a no brainer tbf

It is - but they are being hypocrites

I hope the UK shuts the borders with America for some time when we are through this months before them.

Could we build a wall and get them to pay for it?

Gallowgate said:

Opposite my house, an elderly chap is helping clean the car of the young family who lives next-door. Yesterday he mowed my front lawn randomly. I don’t think he gets it.

Sounds as though he almost certainly will get it, actually.

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

Mortimer said:

I agree. Apart from a Fortnum's wine delivery (half bottles are very helpful in the present circs!) which has just arrived, my discretionary spending this week has been £0. £2500 ought to be enough to tide most people in furlough over.

If you are buying wine from Fortnum's then you should be the one dishing out £2,500 to a few thousand people just on principle.

As a wine guide once observed: if you find yourself in Fortnum's wine department, walk outside and take a taxi to any proper wine shop within a 20 mile radius. The savings you make will be substantial enough to include both the taxi fare there and onward with your wine to home.

Yeah, but Fortnums has an unrivalled selection of half bottles.

Berry Brothers might a better wine merchant, but it simply doesn't stock them.

When my wife was pregnant, I used to buy loads of half bottles from there.

Now the wine industry uses screw tops, not corks, what's the point?

Morris_Dancer said:

Hmm. Pound up to US$1.21.

The way the US is going, the idea of the US$ as the world's reserve currency may be tested to destruction.

rcs1000 said:

As I'm sure you're all aware, @eadric has been feeling unwell for a couple of days, and went to the doctor to get checked.

His test results are through, and he was so relieved he sent a picture of them straight to me:

Well done @eadric. Keep it like that.

Not so sure about the others, though!

felix said:

bigjohnowls said:

IanB2 said:

egg said:

“whatever it takes” part two.

For the record, who actually thinks whatever it takes part one is doable, delivered as promised?

(I am expecting the lefties on here to simply reply yes, and those economically right of centre and government supporters to remain largely silent)

My view from the beginning is that the missing element is a temporary supertax.

Pay Super tax £100

There is no Monopoly on that joke - Go to Jail and do not collect £200.

We had super-tax when Heath and Wilson ran the country. Ah, progressive taxation ... in 2020, what a novel idea that'd be.

IanB2 said:

felix said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

felix said:

Andy_JS said:

There's been a slight drop in both the number of cases and deaths in Spain today.

I think/hope we are near the peak. Certainly the spanish government is praying so as the coalition is fraying and the opposition parties somewhat less compliant. Also the Autonomous Communities are somewhat fretful.

I returned home from a week in Barcelona with my mum just five months ago today. I'm glad we went when we did. Around Christmas, we were sort of semi-planning another trip to Spain or to Portugal round about now. Even more glad we didn't book!

We normally have an early summer cruise. That's about €6000 saved already which helps offsets all investment falls so far. Stuck at home at, for me, a prime shooping time for summer clothes , etc is saving another fortune. Mind you when they let us out I'll be like Viv Nicholson on steroids!

Which is why we should tax you now, not later.

I'm not sure Spain would be too keen on that...

DecrepiterJohnL said:

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

Mortimer said:

I agree. Apart from a Fortnum's wine delivery (half bottles are very helpful in the present circs!) which has just arrived, my discretionary spending this week has been £0. £2500 ought to be enough to tide most people in furlough over.

If you are buying wine from Fortnum's then you should be the one dishing out £2,500 to a few thousand people just on principle.

As a wine guide once observed: if you find yourself in Fortnum's wine department, walk outside and take a taxi to any proper wine shop within a 20 mile radius. The savings you make will be substantial enough to include both the taxi fare there and onward with your wine to home.

Yeah, but Fortnums has an unrivalled selection of half bottles.

Berry Brothers might a better wine merchant, but it simply doesn't stock them.

When my wife was pregnant, I used to buy loads of half bottles from there.

Now the wine industry uses screw tops, not corks, what's the point?

What about champagne or other sparklers

Floater said:

Cuomo tells New York - there is almost no scenario no matter how much we flatten our curve where we realistically avoid the Health System being overwhelmed........

Jeez. That's bad. Really bad.

felix said:

Andy_JS said:

There's been a slight drop in both the number of cases and deaths in Spain today.

I think/hope we are near the peak. Certainly the spanish government is praying so as the coalition is fraying and the opposition parties somewhat less compliant. Also the Autonomous Communities are somewhat fretful.

Fingers crossed for you Felix.

rcs1000 said:

Yes.

But do remember a couple of things:

1. We start with 100x the testing capacity we had back in January / February. This means we can be much more proactive about getting to cases before they spread. In an ideal world, people who have any symptoms use an app or dial a phone number, and a tester is sent around within a couple of hours. Furthermore, those people who worked with that person can be tested before they spread the disease.

2. There will be a proportion of the population (between 1% and 15%) who will likely have immunity. These people - once identified - can continue their regular lives, and can act as frontline testers.

3. As you say, we can be smart at removing restrictions. And we can also be smart at reimposing them.

4. We will have many more ventilators next time around. And we will likely know drug and treatment regimes that lower the hospitalisation and death rate. (And it's possible that hydroxychloroquine + azythromicin is pretty good.)....

Possible; but also quite possible it's not.
Though there are also Remdesivir and Actemra (and others), which look equally, if not more promising.

Otherwise, agreed. We'll have both more information and more capacity to deal with following peaks, and a better idea of how quickly we might need to lock down and for how long, should things start to get out of control.

There are some grounds for optimism if we can get through the next few weeks.

bigjohnowls said:

Floater said:

bigjohnowls said:

Floater said:

williamglenn said:

https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1243204466234580999

The same China who moaned when other countries did the same to them?

Its a no brainer tbf

It is - but they are being hypocrites

I hope the UK shuts the borders with America for some time when we are through this months before them.

Could we build a wall and get them to pay for it?

If and when Trump is re-elected, the worls igoing to have to find a way of working around him. The US is in such a bad place and it is hard to see how it is going to get better. Internally, the divisions are just going to get worse; externally, there will be no rationality. China must see a huge opportunity, though doubts about their regime are surely only going to increase in the West.

TOPPING said:

Mortimer said:

I agree. Apart from a Fortnum's wine delivery (half bottles are very helpful in the present circs!) which has just arrived, my discretionary spending this week has been £0. £2500 ought to be enough to tide most people in furlough over.

If you are buying wine from Fortnum's then you should be the one dishing out £2,500 to a few thousand people just on principle.

As a wine guide once observed: if you find yourself in Fortnum's wine department, walk outside and take a taxi to any proper wine shop within a 20 mile radius. The savings you make will be substantial enough to include both the taxi fare there and onward with your wine to home.

Do Farrs also sell Dundee Cake, and Biscuits, and Jams, and Honeys - and all those other cupboard staples that we seemed to run out of at exactly the same time?

I also find their deliveries fantastic. Sure, I'm sure I could save money shopping elsewhere, but at the moment they're reassuringly expensive and offer a top service.

Should we be sending aid ships across the Atlantic to New York?

Charles said:

FF43 said:

Charles said:

FF43 said:

The only risk with going ahead with the EU allocation of ventilators is the cost of equipment. Which is trivial in the scheme of things. If the government finds they are surplus to requirements, it can sell them on. It's a no brainer.

The risks are much higher of depending on a manufacturer, who hasn't made this equipment before to productise a new design in a matter of days without testing in the field. It is sensible to mitigate that risk.

Brexit is the only reason I can see for not doing so. The government hasn't actually put forward a justification for not doing so..

Do you know?

My guess - and it is just a guess - that if you participate in the scheme then *all* equipment has to be purchased through it (and shared according to whatever the scheme sets out). This is sensible because it stops the various countries also going direct and competing for supply.

Given that Smiths Medical (one of the leading manufacturers of ventilators), Medlock Medical (ditto for PPE) and Regent Biogel (ditto for surgical gloves) are all based in the UK it may have been rational for the UK to decline.

I can quite imagine that the government doesn't want to stand up publicly and say "f*ck everyone else, we are hoarding stuff for our own population". The optics would not be good.

Do you have the list of countries participating? I don't think it is all of them.

I'd be particularly interested in Sweden (Molnlycke, Getinge) and Germany (Hartmann).

It would be reasonable in that case for the government to offer this explanation in response to the direct question. In fact their very weak justification is that "we're no longer members of the EU", which supports my explanation.

I get the impression that this is something of a Boris Bus project where the project becomes the objective, not the product itself. So that might be part of it.

If you are going to make an accusation of that serious a nature you need more evidence than "I get the impression"

I don't think an impression that no-one else needs to share counts as a serious accusation. For the avoidance of doubt, I think we should get other manufacturers to make equipment, where this makes sense, and where OEMs don't have the capacity.

rcs1000 said:

As I'm sure you're all aware, @eadric has been feeling unwell for a couple of days, and went to the doctor to get checked.

His test results are through, and he was so relieved he sent a picture of them straight to me:

No Viagra?
I'd imagined that the collection of incarnations currently known as Eadric would be the types to be at it like bunnies in the face of catastrophe.

When is Rishi giving money away?

Pulpstar said:

Nigelb said:

Maybe Rick Stein isn't the worst....

https://twitter.com/nedoliver/status/1242914541605924875

Employment lawyers aren't going to be short of work for the forseeable future.

Not so much in the States.
Employment protections there are far more threadbare than over here.

Mortimer said:

TOPPING said:

Mortimer said:

I agree. Apart from a Fortnum's wine delivery (half bottles are very helpful in the present circs!) which has just arrived, my discretionary spending this week has been £0. £2500 ought to be enough to tide most people in furlough over.

If you are buying wine from Fortnum's then you should be the one dishing out £2,500 to a few thousand people just on principle.

As a wine guide once observed: if you find yourself in Fortnum's wine department, walk outside and take a taxi to any proper wine shop within a 20 mile radius. The savings you make will be substantial enough to include both the taxi fare there and onward with your wine to home.

Do Farrs also sell Dundee Cake, and Biscuits, and Jams, and Honeys - and all those other cupboard staples that we seemed to run out of at exactly the same time?

I also find their deliveries fantastic. Sure, I'm sure I could save money shopping elsewhere, but at the moment they're reassuringly expensive and offer a top service.

Reassuringly expensive - exactly. Far from me to tell people how to spend their money. Not Russian oligarchs, or you (about the only two categories I can think of who are happy to buy wine at Fortnums).

As for the Dundee Cake and biscuits, etc, same thing: up to you although I'm betting your local farm shop could do with some help right now.

Even my Aunt who lives off Eaton Square doesn't stretch to Fortnum's and makes do by slumming it at Jeroboams.

Gallowgate said:

Should we be sending aid ships across the Atlantic to New York?

If it's to be an EU joint effort, we should definitely call them bateaux de la liberté.

RobD said:

Fenster said:

matthiasfromhamburg said:

Floater said:

Floater said:

6 new deaths and 113 new cases in Wales

3 more deaths in NI

Does anyone have a plausible explanation why over recent days the devolved parts of the UK have reported much higher rises in cases and fatalities than England did?

I read on Twitter that England only reported haf a day's figures yesterday. That might account for skewed numbers.

I read that they were only missing a few hours. 7:30 cut off, rather than 9.

If that's the case then that does sound positive.

"only 5% of close contacts of infected individuals traced in China subsequently tested positive"

https://necsi.edu/review-of-ferguson-et-al-impact-of-non-pharmaceutical-interventions?fbclid=IwAR3NXwEg20Vc_laIo30bDAVPMYXUuHaFn99cZJm9rUsMP8UxcIGZ-MZKdvg

Floater said:

MyBurningEars said:

MarqueeMark said:

Charles said:

Barnesian said:

Here is the latest world data. It appears the latest UK figures for deaths have not been added for some reason.

My pet peeve.

If you are going to have two charts with the same categories (in this case countries) side by side then use the same f*cking colours!

And I'm pretty sure the UK deaths haven't plateaued.....

Data query: what site are people pulling their death numbers from?

A popular choice would be John Hopkins CSSE who are helpfully tracking deaths and confirmed by cases by country and region and sticking it up on GitHub. Here's their deaths page for example.

Problem is, their UK numbers don't seem to match the UK's official figures, whereas Wikipedia's figures seem to be getting it right.

This is a bit frustrating as it is dead easy to pull the CSSE figures from the raw CSV but then you get UK cumulative death progression as 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 8, 8, 21, 21, 55, 55, 71, 137, 177, 233, 281, 335, 422, 465 (you can see this looks wonky because some of the cumulative totals are repeating from one day to the next, as if nobody had died that day, when the figure hasn't been updated) rather than the (correct?) figures that Wiki has which are 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10, 21, 35, 55, 71, 103, 144, 177, 233, 281, 335, 422, 465.

I don't mind hardcoding and typing out a few numbers but it's nicer if you can just write a line of code that goes to an online data source and extracts it all for you, especially if you want to do international comparisons. It's generally a bit fiddlier scraping data from Wikipedia. So where is everyone else going?

i get mine here

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Or here at a pinch although these guys are a bit slow now


https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/03/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/

I get mine here

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

Mortimer said:

I agree. Apart from a Fortnum's wine delivery (half bottles are very helpful in the present circs!) which has just arrived, my discretionary spending this week has been £0. £2500 ought to be enough to tide most people in furlough over.

If you are buying wine from Fortnum's then you should be the one dishing out £2,500 to a few thousand people just on principle.

As a wine guide once observed: if you find yourself in Fortnum's wine department, walk outside and take a taxi to any proper wine shop within a 20 mile radius. The savings you make will be substantial enough to include both the taxi fare there and onward with your wine to home.

Yeah, but Fortnums has an unrivalled selection of half bottles.

Berry Brothers might a better wine merchant, but it simply doesn't stock them.

When my wife was pregnant, I used to buy loads of half bottles from there.

There is a company in Kent called Halfwine, have you tried them? Quite a big range but a lot out of stock as we speak (not all down to me I hasten to add)

Charles said:

Mortimer said:

TOPPING said:

Mortimer said:

I agree. Apart from a Fortnum's wine delivery (half bottles are very helpful in the present circs!) which has just arrived, my discretionary spending this week has been £0. £2500 ought to be enough to tide most people in furlough over.

If you are buying wine from Fortnum's then you should be the one dishing out £2,500 to a few thousand people just on principle.

As a wine guide once observed: if you find yourself in Fortnum's wine department, walk outside and take a taxi to any proper wine shop within a 20 mile radius. The savings you make will be substantial enough to include both the taxi fare there and onward with your wine to home.

Do Farrs also sell Dundee Cake, and Biscuits, and Jams, and Honeys - and all those other cupboard staples that we seemed to run out of at exactly the same time?

I also find their deliveries fantastic. Sure, I'm sure I could save money shopping elsewhere, but at the moment they're reassuringly expensive and offer a top service.

There was a time when my Dad was on an exercise on Salisbury Plain... somehow he persuaded the radio operator to allow him to send a personal message... later that evening a delivery man on a motorbike turned up at his platoon's trench and delivered them a full Fortum's hamper...

Excellent!

FrancisUrquhart said:

I see even in these dark times PB is keeping standards up by discussing F+N wine selections

What do you mean 'even'? It's precisely in these dark times that you most need decent wines. (Since you ask, Pol Roger last night, just the non-vintage. I thought about the R de Ruinart, which would have been appropriate as we usually have it at the Royal Opera House, and we were sitting down to watch the free stream of the Met's Die Walküre, but decided the occasion wasn't quite special enough for the Ruinart.)

Nigelb said:

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

Mortimer said:

I agree. Apart from a Fortnum's wine delivery (half bottles are very helpful in the present circs!) which has just arrived, my discretionary spending this week has been £0. £2500 ought to be enough to tide most people in furlough over.

If you are buying wine from Fortnum's then you should be the one dishing out £2,500 to a few thousand people just on principle.

As a wine guide once observed: if you find yourself in Fortnum's wine department, walk outside and take a taxi to any proper wine shop within a 20 mile radius. The savings you make will be substantial enough to include both the taxi fare there and onward with your wine to home.

Yeah, but Fortnums has an unrivalled selection of half bottles.

Berry Brothers might a better wine merchant, but it simply doesn't stock them.

When my wife was pregnant, I used to buy loads of half bottles from there.

All those half bottles suggests a customer base of lonely rich people ?

add "lightweight" :-)

Floater said:

Just the Flu....


https://twitter.com/PaulNuki/status/1243193056888860673

It's clearly not the flu! But the total lockdown strategy (which we have now moved to) does imply low tens of thousands of deaths in the UK, which is good news at least (cf the table in the linked thread).

Charles said:

Mortimer said:

TOPPING said:

Mortimer said:

I agree. Apart from a Fortnum's wine delivery (half bottles are very helpful in the present circs!) which has just arrived, my discretionary spending this week has been £0. £2500 ought to be enough to tide most people in furlough over.

If you are buying wine from Fortnum's then you should be the one dishing out £2,500 to a few thousand people just on principle.

As a wine guide once observed: if you find yourself in Fortnum's wine department, walk outside and take a taxi to any proper wine shop within a 20 mile radius. The savings you make will be substantial enough to include both the taxi fare there and onward with your wine to home.

Do Farrs also sell Dundee Cake, and Biscuits, and Jams, and Honeys - and all those other cupboard staples that we seemed to run out of at exactly the same time?

I also find their deliveries fantastic. Sure, I'm sure I could save money shopping elsewhere, but at the moment they're reassuringly expensive and offer a top service.

There was a time when my Dad was on an exercise on Salisbury Plain... somehow he persuaded the radio operator to allow him to send a personal message... later that evening a delivery man on a motorbike turned up at his platoon's trench and delivered them a full Fortum's hamper...

Your father was obviously an amazing man.

Contrarily, my alcohol consumption has declined since I entered the Covid-19 twilight world. My other half has decided we need to lose weight so the wine has been sparingly opened.

Greater Manchester police have confirmed that members of the public are allowed to travel to and from allotments as part of their daily exercise set out by the government.

The clarification comes after a BBC Radio Manchester listener asked the chief constable, Ian Hopkins, if they could still tend to theirs....

ABZ said:

On reflection, I think we should not expect a peak but rather a plateau. This reflects the (stochastic) latency of the disease. A plateau over a week or so should likely then be followed by a fall. I think this is where we are in Italy at present.

Are you talking about a peak in total number infected, or number of positive daily tests?

The other problem, of course, in measuring where countries are is the difference in testing regimes. If a country moves to only testing people in hospital with obvious symptoms, then it'll probably see the number of tests decline, and the number of positives decline. Yet that masks underlying deterioration.

To my mind the evidence of getting CV-19 under control in a country is when you get the combination of (a) rising numbers of tests, and (b) falling number of positives.

Which is where Italy was yesterday - all time peak in numbers of administered tests, sixth highest number of positives.

Hopefully today will see another peak in number of administered tests, and the number of positives drop again.

It will also be instructive to see where we are with Lombardy and Veneto, as they are 3-4 days ahead of the rest of Italy.

Nigelb said:

Greater Manchester police have confirmed that members of the public are allowed to travel to and from allotments as part of their daily exercise set out by the government.

The clarification comes after a BBC Radio Manchester listener asked the chief constable, Ian Hopkins, if they could still tend to theirs....

For some reason this made me think of Only Fools and Horses.

IanB2 said:

My preferred solution would have been to drop some helicopter money on everyone. Avoid all this admin with grant schemes and loan schemes and means testing forms and the rest.

Recover the cost on full from higher rate taxpayers by - for this year only - reducing the point at which you pay higher rate tax by a balancing amount. Push the enhanced higher rate tax back up to 50%.

Partially offset the cost of the helicopter money by reducing the personal tax allowance, for this year only. And by making the helicopter money taxable.

Those lucky enough to still be earning aren’t spending. Asking us to pay more tax, temporarily, to keep those not earning above water is entirely reasonable.

Coming along afterwards to try and balance the books will be a lot more difficult. The oldies will have forgotten by then all the sacrifices working age people made to keep them safe, including volunteering in huge numbers to do their shopping and deliver their medicines, and will go back to moaning about having to pay for their TV licence.

On fire there, Ian. High earners with income still flowing but fewer ways to spend it. What a compelling case - financial and moral - for a tax hike. If there isn't one they could end up better (!) off which would be unconscionable. You would probably have to exempt some people though, e.g. doctors and the like.

Fysics_Teacher said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

I see even in these dark times PB is keeping standards up by discussing F+N wine selections

What do you mean 'even'? It's precisely in these dark times that you most need decent wines. (Since you ask, Pol Roger last night, just the non-vintage. I thought about the R de Ruinart, which would have been appropriate as we usually have it at the Royal Opera House, and we were sitting down to watch the free stream of the Met's Die Walküre, but decided the occasion wasn't quite special enough for the Ruinart.)

Hang on, why did no one mention free streams from the Met? How did you get it and are there any more?

Of champagne ? !

rcs1000 said:

ABZ said:

On reflection, I think we should not expect a peak but rather a plateau. This reflects the (stochastic) latency of the disease. A plateau over a week or so should likely then be followed by a fall. I think this is where we are in Italy at present.

Are you talking about a peak in total number infected, or number of positive daily tests?

The other problem, of course, in measuring where countries are is the difference in testing regimes. If a country moves to only testing people in hospital with obvious symptoms, then it'll probably see the number of tests decline, and the number of positives decline. Yet that masks underlying deterioration.

To my mind the evidence of getting CV-19 under control in a country is when you get the combination of (a) rising numbers of tests, and (b) falling number of positives.

Which is where Italy was yesterday - all time peak in numbers of administered tests, sixth highest number of positives.

Hopefully today will see another peak in number of administered tests, and the number of positives drop again.

It will also be instructive to see where we are with Lombardy and Veneto, as they are 3-4 days ahead of the rest of Italy.

The medium-term aim won't be a return to track and trace though. Suppression measures will need to continue for a long time.

I am currently teetotal, but do find red wine is often better the second day, having breathed a bit. White wine tends to go a bit vinegar and lose its floral bouquet though.

I tend to drink in the £10-15 pound bottle range, so a fraction of the average PB bonus vivier.

It is worrying re @eadrics results, several more weeks of quivering anxiety to come. He may need to double up on the pills.

https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/1243220554066415616

Mrs RP just walked in. Hears the radio - "Is that Rishi Sunak? He sounds just like Tony Blair..."